by DailyDigest

This is Good News Friday, where we find some good economic, energy, and environmental news and share it with PP readers. Please send any positive news to [email protected] with subject header “Good News Friday.” We will save and post weekly. Enjoy!

Economy

The researchers examined independent genetic variants linked to two physical activity phenotypes — self-reported and objective accelerometer-based — and to major depressive disorder as genetic instruments from large genome-wide association studies (GWAS). Then, they combined mendelian randomization estimates from each genetic instrument. The GWAS included data from the UK Biobank on physical activity and studies in the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium on major depression among adults of European ancestry.

“I believe that people make mistakes and there’s opportunities to change, and that needs to be recognized,” she said, according to the Des Moines Register. “So it’s something that I’m passionate about.”

Two states — Maine and Vermont — never take away a felon’s right to vote.

However evidence has been growing that the function of amyloid proteins may be as a defence against bacteria, leading to a spate of recent studies looking at bacteria in Alzheimer’s, particularly those that cause gum disease, which is known to be a major risk factor for the condition.

“It’s important for me [to provide free meals] because these guys are our brothers and sisters, and they already did the work, and they aren’t getting paid,” Terou explained to “Good Morning America.” “For someone like me who is living the American dream in the American land…I believe every hard worker should reach his goal and have a good level of life.”

“Nova Scotians are national leaders in waste diversion, but there is still more we can do to keep waste out of our landfills,” Environment Minister Margaret Miller said in a news release. “We want Nova Scotians to continue to recycle and compost, but we also need to ensure we’re doing all we can to reduce our footprint. This will give new businesses the chance to create something useful from waste destined for landfills.”

Hundreds of years ago, New York Harbor teemed with more than 200,000 acres of live oyster reefs. The molluscs cleaned and filtered the water, naturally removing pollutants. Dolphins, seals and other creatures, drawn to the vibrant ecosystem, swam just off the shore of Manhattan.

“When Europeans first arrived in New York Harbor, there were oyster reefs everywhere and there were so many fish that they couldn’t physically get out of the way of the boats,” Malinowski said. “In about 100 years, we had harvested all the native oysters from the harbor. All those oysters were eaten, consumed locally by New Yorkers, and shipped all over the world as food.”

And as pollinator habitat wanes, solar installations are taking up ever more land. The U.S. is expected to convert six million acres of land to such facilities before 2050, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). Some researchers see this as an opportunity to reclaim land for pollinating species by replacing the usual grass or gravel at these sites with wildflowers that need insects to pollinate them, and that produce the nectar those insects eat. “If we can create some habitat where there wasn’t habitat before, like on solar farms, we can likely have a positive impact,” says Scott McArt, an entomologist at Cornell University.

In case you missed it, renewable energy is thriving. A recent report from Wood Mackenzie predicts that clean energy technologies have now become so cost effective that they will replace fossil fuels as the main source of energy within the the next 20 years. Already, five states—California, Nevada, Hawaii, Massachusetts, and Vermont—generate 10 percent or more of their energy from solar energy. More than 100 cities and counties across the country have committed to transitioning to 100 percent clean energy. Germany produced enough renewable energy in the first half of 2018 to power every household in the country for a year, and Portugal ran on renewable energy for the entire month of March. In many places, it’s now cheaper to build and run new wind and solar farms than to run existing coal plants.

Gold & Silver

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